David goes to Greenland

by David Binney Putnam

It was a big clam bed. Altogether we dug about a bushel and that night we had a fine clam chowder. Not quite as exciting as getting a walrus, but at least it was fun and we claimed the clams really were the first game brought back to the Morrissey.

We saw Newfoundland for the first time on the twenty-eighth of June. It was a very pretty sight, the mountains with snow on their sides [[20]]that had not melted away on account of the very late season. Dad says wherever one goes it always seems that there is an unusual season. On some of the hills the sun was shining and on others great shadows were floating around. In some ways they looked much like the hills in Montana, rolling and mostly bare.

We saw three little fishing schooners off the Bay of Islands, which is a big bay on the western shore of Newfoundland. It took us from four o’clock until eight to cross the bay. We passed one of these boats about seven-thirty and heard someone playing the cornet, not very well. It sounded queer to hear a sound like that come floating across these far-away waters.

There was a beautiful sunset, so red that it looked like blood dripping out of the sky. Ahead the weather looked fine, but astern was a big black cloud with lightning darting out of it every once in a while. And it sure [[21]]did storm. It was so dark that we couldn’t see a thing. On deck I fell two or three times, as it’s pretty hard to get around in the dark on account of the deck cargo—barrels, dories, motor-boats and the Hobbs canoes, beside lots of lumber and rope.

The wind was blowing like everything and the rain came down in torrents. Art and myself put on our oilskins and boots and went on deck to cover up the skylights that were leaking an awful lot. Skylights never seem to work quite right, anyway. We put canvas and tarpaulins over them. Water was breaking over our bows. But the Morrissey didn’t seem to care a bit, and I think Cap’n Bob and Will really seemed to sort of like it. Cap’n Bob is a wonder and is most awfully nice to me. He seems to like having me work on the ropes and get into things as much as I can about the vessel.

The lightning struck pretty near us once or twice and often the whole sky was bright [[22]]with forks of blinding lightning darting about wildly.

We saw our first icebergs on the twenty-ninth, and from noon on passed about ten, four of them really big ones. One of them was about fifty feet high and a hundred feet long. An iceberg is about one eighth above water and seven eighths below. You can imagine how big the one I described must really be; and of course later we saw bergs much bigger. The smaller bergs and pieces of floating ice are called “growlers.”

Just a week ago we had reports that the Straits of Belle Isle were frozen over from Labrador to Newfoundland, but the south wind of the last few days seemed to have pretty well cleaned them out, and we went through without any trouble. In the Straits we saw two steamers, which like ourselves were probably making the first passage of this season.

After leaving the Straits we saw scattered [[23]]bergs all day until about four o’clock when we ran into our first real ice. There were lots and lots of pieces in a huge bunch about three miles by one mile. There were bergs as big as a good-sized house floating around by the hundreds. I went aloft with Ed Manley and looked around on the beautiful sight. The ice was blue on the top and a very pretty light green underneath. When up in the crow’s nest you can see the bottom of the bergs a way down.

In the morning it was pretty foggy and we came close to some big bergs. Once when I was on deck we saw a berg not a hundred yards away that looked like a small hotel, about a hundred and twenty feet high and three hundred feet long.